A HERMIT IN THE HIMALAYAS
human ingratitude and human treachery has driven deeply into my
temperament. I feel the fundamental benignity of Nature despite
the apparent manifestation of ferocity. Like the sounds of every
instrument in an orchestra that is in tune, all things and all people
seem to drop into the sweet relationship that subsists within the
Great Mother's own heart.
I begin to perceive why my honoured Master makes no sugges-
tions for a special kind of meditation and gives no mystic formula to
be pondered upon and unravelled. He wishes me to make no effort
to arrive at some higher position, but simply to be effortless. He does
not hold up some picture of what I have to become, but merely says,
be! In short, it is a matter of doing nothing in order to allow some-
thing to be done to me.
We humans have become so self-important and so self-conceited
in our own eyes that it does not occur to us that the Great Mother
who bears us so patiently upon her earthy breast, feeds us with such
abundant variety of foodstuffs, and takes us back again when we
are sufficiently tired, has a purpose of her own which she wishes to
achieve in us if we will but let her. We have set up our schemes and
projects, we have decided what we want to get from life, and we are
thinking, striving, struggling and even agonizing in our efforts to
obtain tie satisfaction of our desires. If, however, we devoted a
quarter of our time to ceasing from self-efforts and quietly letting
Nature's mind permeate our own, we might make a wise revision of
the catalogue of things wanted, yet at the same time secure Nature's
co-operation in obtaining them.
The world is but an enlarged hotel, where we are lodged and fed
by Mother Nature, pay our bill and then pass on.
For Nature has a will to outwork in us and only by desisting for a
time from the continuous exercise of our own wills can we acquaint
ourselves with her purpose. IŁ however, we do this we may learn
with surprise that she also has a way of silently yet forcefully attain-
ing this end before our eyes, once we help her by such selflessness.
And then her aims and our aims become one, interblent Ambitions
are then transmuted into aspirations and the things we once wanted
to achieve for our own individual benefit alone become achieved,
almost effortlessly, through us for the benefit of others as well. To
co-operate with her in this way is to give up carrying the burden of
life and to let her carry it for us; everything becomes easy, even
miraculous.
I have seen these truths before, but now, in my mountain
sanctuary and in closer tie with the Mother, I sec them with startling
clarity.
A poet has said that Nature is the garment of God. Yes, but to me
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